Super Mario Galaxy 2 Preorder £29.99 @ Gameplay [Nintendo Wii Games]

Although it's not released for another three months, certain people out there are beginning to get far too excited about the imminent arrival of the sure to be incredible new Mario Galaxy game.

Gameplay are currently offering the only sub-£30 preorder price for Mario's second romp through the galaxy: a very reasonable £29.99 which, thanks to their free postage policy, is £2 shy of their nearest competitor Gameseek.

Few games have given me as much joy in the past ten years as Mario's bright and beautiful intergalactic adventure. E3 2009 gave us some amazing teasing glimpses of Mario's new forays into outer space and every bit of footage eked out since has made me more and more ludicrously impatient to get my hands on the game.

In many ways the second instalment offers more of the same: 3D platforming action on a plethora of planets, often varying wildly in size and landscape. However, when a game is as great as the original Mario Galaxy, "more of the same" is a very tantalising prospect. That said, there are plenty of new features to stir the action up a little, the best publicised of these being the inclusion of Mario's dino pal Yoshi who appears in a number of levels, doing his usual Yoshi thang as well as a few new tricks such as inflating like a balloon, using his tongue as a zip wire across pits and eating different fruits to gain power ups. The bee suit from the first game makes a comeback but there are also plenty of new items and gameplay mechanics to discover, such as a planet drill and switches which affect the flow of time.

There is no doubt in my mind that Super Mario Galaxy 2 will be another near perfect piece of platforming genius and June just can't come soon enough!